Prof. Dr. Daniel D. Hromada
Nachhaltigkeit @ Weizenbaum Institute (AE531012)
CC BY-NC-SA

Green Illusions ?

GPT4 PROMPT: "I will have a 10 minute impulse talk at Weizenbaum institute about digital sustainability (DS). It will be fairly critical, starting with the idea that concept of DS is an oxymoron, given that digitalization as we currently practice it, is definitely not sustainable. Greenwashing will also be mentioned. Then I will move to more optimistic perspectives: solarpunk and permacomputing in order to end with introduction of the concept of digital ascesis. Provide five alternatives for a fairly short title..."

Nachhaltigkeit ...

dall-e 3: "sustainability"

Nachhaltigkeit von was ? Von Umwelt? Von biologischen Vielfalt ? Von etablierten Institutionen ? Von "status quo" ? Von nicht-nachhaltigen Strukturen und Praktiken (z.B. unbegrenzte Wachstum im begrenzten Raum ?)

Quaternio terminorum

... einen fehlerhaften Schluss, der dadurch zustandekommt, dass der Ausdruck für den Mittelbegiff in zwei verschiedenen Bedeutungen im Ober- und Untersatz des Schlusses gebraucht wird...

Nachhaltige Digitalisierung ?

Mann kann, in Theorie, über Nachhaltigkeit von Digitalisierung sprechen wenn alle Ressourcen wie

Material

Energie

Wasser / Kühlmittel

und alle Aspekte, Nebenwirkungen und "collaterals" der

Produktion

Betrieb

Abfallbewirtschaftung

berücksichtigt sind.

Digitale Opulenz: GPU-rich

dall-e%203%3A%20%22gpt4%20was%20trained%20on%2025000%20A100%20GPUs%20over%20a%20period%20of%20100%20days%22

dall-e 3: "gpt4 was trained on 25000 A100 GPUs over a period of 100 days"

"There are a handful of firms with 20k+ A/H100 GPUs, and individual researchers can access 100s or 1,000s of GPUs for pet projects. The chief among these are researchers at OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Inflection, X, and Meta, who will have the highest ratios of compute resources to researchers. A few of the firms above as well as multiple Chinese firms will 100k+ by the end of next year...."

(Patel & Nishball, 2023, Google Gemini Eats The World)

GPU-poors

dall-e%203%3A%20%22alan%20turing%20inventing%20turing%20machine%2C%20cracking%20the%20enigma%2C%20conceiving%20turing%20test%20and%20biting%20into%20the%20poisoned%20apple%22

dall-e 3: "alan turing inventing turing machine, cracking the enigma, conceiving turing test and biting into the poisoned apple"

"Then there are a whole host of startups and open-source researchers who are struggling with far fewer GPUs. They are spending significant time and effort attempting to do things that simply don’t help, or frankly, matter...What can be done commercially in GPU-poor environment is mostly irrelevant to a world that will be flooded by more than 3.5 million H100s by the end of next year...The underdogs should be focusing on tradeoffs that improve model performance or token to token latency...Europe will fall behind in this race due to the lack of ability to make big investments and choosing to stay GPU-poor..."

(Patel & Nishball, 2023, Google Gemini Eats The World)

Digitale ἄσκησις

An exercised, disciplined poor one practically always gets better "last laugh" than all those pesky rich ones driven by ὕβρις and vanity.

Example 1: Size-coding

"Sizecoding is art of creating very small computer programs which are usually 512 bytes or less in size. The size of these tiny programs is measured by their total size in opcode bytes and are usually presented as an executable binary.

Those programs usually come with many technical tricks and are mostly written in assembly language..."

Permacomputing

"Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in computer and network technology inspired by permaculture.

In a time where computing epitomizes industrial waste, permacomputing encourages the maximizing of hardware lifespans, minimizing energy use and focussing on the use of already available computational resources. We do this we want to find out how we can practice good relations with the Earth by learning from ecological systems to leverage and re-center existing technologies and practices..."

permacomputing.net

Example 2: Gemini Protocol

Gemini is an application-layer WWW protocol created by in 2019. Gemini and its document format (Gemtext) are somewhat similar to Gopher but add some features from modern WWW, such as mandatory encryption, hyperlinks and URLs. Due to the simplicity of Gemini, there is already a large amount of fully compliant client software.

Solarpunk

udk.ai%20stable%20diffusion%20prompt%3A%20%22in%20garden%20of%20eden%20creator%20creates%20human%20who%20creates%20humanoid%20in%20solarpunk%20city%22

udk.ai stable diffusion prompt: "in garden of eden creator creates human who creates humanoid in solarpunk city"

"Solarpunk beschreibt eine Zukunft in der Klimakatastrophe und Umweltverschmutzung zumindest teilweise überwunden sind und Inklusion und Diversität das Zusammenleben prägen. Solarpunk wird von Gruppen weltweit in diversen Sprachen über eine Vielzahl von Medien wie Literatur, Kunst, Architektur, Mode, Musik und Computerspielen transportiert. Es wird oft eine ökologische Zukunft beschrieben, die tatsächlich durch vorhandene Technologien und politische Bewegungen erreichbar scheint und eine positive Zukunft für die Menschheit darstellt."

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk

Bildung Biodigitale

Elemente naturwissenschaftlichen Wissens aus Biologie, Ökologie und Botanik sind kritisch mit Elementen der Informationswissenschaften wie Informatik, Kybernetik und KI gegengelesen.

Unterricht im Freien (outdoor on-line learning)

"eco-artificial education" mithilfe von Apps wie Merlin, Naturblick, SvampeAtlas

eigene Artefakte (digitale Fibel, Magic Wand 0)

eigenes Software (teacher.js, Kastalia Knowledge Management System)

Das "Bildung Biodigitale" Konzept wurde im Rahmen des Projektes teacher.solar / Stifterverbands Senior Fellowship für Innovationen in der Hochschulbildung entwickelt.

∴

Danke für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit

daniel@udk-berlin.de

baumhaus.digital/973

Slava Ukrajine